1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for printing with a flatbed printer comprising a flatbed surface for placing a piece of media to be printed upon, a controller configured to control the printing of digital images on the piece of media, and a print head for ejecting recording material on the piece of media.
The present invention also relates to a flatbed printer comprising a flatbed surface for placing media to be printed upon, a controller configured to control the printing of digital images, and a print head for ejecting recording material on the media, the print head being movable over the flatbed surface.
The present invention further relates to a computer program product, including computer readable code embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium, said computer readable code comprising instructions for generating a print according to the method of the present invention, and to a flatbed printer configured to generate prints according to the method of the present invention.
The print head of the flatbed printer may be mounted on a gantry above the flatbed surface. In case of a gantry, the gantry may be moving over the flatbed surface in a first direction, while the print head is movable along the gantry in a second direction perpendicular to the first direction. In case of a print head having a same width as the flatbed surface, the print head may be moving in one direction over the flatbed surface. The controller is connected to the print head for controlling the print head. The controller is also configured to control the movement of the print head over the flatbed surface. The distance from the print head to the flatbed surface may be variable in order to allow the printing of 3D images.
The recording material may be a hot melt ink or a UV curable ink. When the latter ink is used, the print head is also provided with UV lamps for curing the recording material when ejected on the piece of media placed on the flatbed surface. The flatbed surface usually has the form of a rectangle, for example of a width of 1.22 m and a length of 1.22 m, or of a width of 1.22 m and a length of 2.44 m.
A piece of media with dimensions smaller or equal to the dimensions of the flatbed surface can be placed on the flatbed surface. Even a piece of media with dimensions larger than the dimensions of the flatbed surface can be placed on the flatbed surface. However, a large piece of media has to be moved to completely print the large piece of media.
Flatbed print systems usually apply recording material, like colorants, on a piece of media placed on the flatbed in the form of toner or ink, wherein the ink may be hot melt ink or UV curable ink, according to a digitally defined, two-dimensional pattern of pixels with values that indicate a composition of these colorants. This pattern is generated out of a digital image, that may comprise objects in either vectorized or rasterized format, using conventional techniques like interpretation, rendering, and screening by a raster image processor. The processing of a digital image includes color management to convert color values of the pixels in the digital image into composition values related to the printer color space as is set up by the colorants of the print system. Depending on the intended print quality and the characteristics of the print process, the pixels of the pattern may be printed in more than one pass, wherein a position of the piece of media on the flatbed has an opportunity to receive a colorant in one or more of the passes of the print head across the flatbed.
2. Description of Background Art
An operator may place pieces of media on the flatbed surface in order to print images on the pieces of media according to digital images, which have been offered to the controller. Positioning of a piece of media must be done very accurately with respect to its orientation. The operator usually measures right-angled distances of the piece of media from the edges of the flatbed surface with a measuring tool like a measuring cord, a tape-measure or a ruler. Another method to position the media is to align the piece of media with reference rules, which have been printed on the flatbed table beforehand. The operator enters the measured distances with an application running on a computer connected to the controller of the flatbed printer or on the controller itself. After entering the distances, the operator selects the digital image to be printed on the piece of media and starts the printing of the flatbed printer. Therefore, the controller or the computer is provided with a user interface suitable for data entry in general. Resuming, the operator has to execute different manual steps. Each step may lead to operator errors before printing the digital image on the piece of media.